‘Billions’ Season 1, Episode 9: Bobby the Profiteer

Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Where the ____ Is Donnie?’

“Axelrod Hall will not be named Axelrod Hall forever,” I predicted in the recap to the second episode of “Billions,” when Bobby moved to buy the naming rights to a symphony hall and etch his name in the firmament. But who could have guessed the request to remove the Axelrod name would come this soon?

In short order, Bobby’s reputation has slid from billionaire philanthropist to Sept. 11 profiteer, turning the quarter-billion he has offered in donations to firefighters and policemen into blood money to cover his acts of rapacious greed. And the very first man to visit him is the hall’s administrator, that snooty gatekeeper to the elite, armed with a story about how the real St. Nicholas kept his generosity on the down-low.

As it happens, this visit is the only break Bobby catches in “Where the ____ is Donnie?,” which is the first episode to throw his master-of-the-universe status into question. When the administrator turns up in his absurd intellectual get-up — glasses down his nose, tweed vest, pocket square — he might as well be wearing a “Kick Me” sign, since he has no actual power to compel Bobby to take his name off the building. “The vultures and hyenas always share their carcass meal,” says Bobby with a pursed grin, but he’ll be damned if this fop will feast off his diminished status. “It’s either Axelrod Hall or Go ____ Yourself Hall. You choose.”

But that’s the lone victory in an episode of losses for Bobby, who has severely underestimated the fallout over his Sept. 11 transactions. Until this point, “Billions” had never given the impression that Bobby wasn’t firmly in control of his empire, always a move or two ahead in his three-dimensional chess game with Chuck. While Chuck rages and schemes and punishes himself, Bobby coolly blocks and counterpunches, and ruthlessly leverages whatever advantage he can get. The worst that could be said about Bobby until tonight is that he acts impulsively, albeit with the understanding that he can talk or buy his way out of a jam — or have his wife, his fixer, his legal team or his endless connections do it for him.

So when Dimonda dropped the scoop about the incriminating book chapter, Bobby’s reaction is surprisingly sanguine. The timing may have been less than ideal, given his current legal entanglements, but Bobby knew that one day, he would have to answer for the $750 million he collected in trades as the attack on the Twin Towers killed his partners, his future brother-in-law, and thousands of others. Over the 15 years since, his philanthropy has operated as insurance money, too, a hedge against future damage to his character. But now that it’s come time to file a claim, Bobby has discovered that it won’t be as easy to collect as he might have anticipated. The firefighters, including Lara’s ex-boyfriend, are seeing the situation for what it is: a greedy hedge-funder attempting to paper over his sins. Or as an old Onion headline put it: “Corporate Philanthropy-Misanthropy Ratio Holding Steady” (at 1:1,770).

Bobby anticipated some blowback — and, in fact, seems genuine in understanding why people are mad at him — but there are signs in “Where the ____ Is Donnie?” that he wasn’t prepared for the depth and breadth of the response against him. He can live with the protesters, who refuse his offer of coffee and doughnuts, but accept limo rides home in the rain. He can accept, without more than a twinge of regret, that the police pension-fund manager wants to close his account with Axe Capital. Yet the firefighters are not appeased by his assurances or convinced by a station house visit where he claims, disingenuously, that he knew the families of those who died on Sept. 11 would be his responsibility and that motivated him to step “on the gas” even after the Towers fell. He’s lost their support and doesn’t appear to have any hope of getting it back — or, at a minimum, of keeping them from actively sabotaging his assets.

Worse still, Lara has been turned into collateral damage. Though they met around Sept. 11, when Lara was volunteering her time as a recent nursing school graduate, she wasn’t part of Bobby’s decision-making process that day. She is sympathetic to his rationale, of course, and castigates her ex-boyfriend as a “simpleton” for not understanding it. But Lara loses the support of her family, loses the restaurant to made-up code violations, and loses the farm to sabotage. Bobby’s philosophy is to live with the hatred, understanding that it’ll eventually pass like all outrages do. He is willing to hold onto the restaurant for 10 years without needing to make a dime off it, but he errs in believing that Lara will be as sanguine about absorbing the blows. She doesn’t want to live in exile.

Then there’s the Donnie issue. One episode after Bobby revealed himself as puppet master to Donnie, the United States attorney’s key informant, he loses control of him, too. After submitting a rotten trade that will win the company hundreds of millions of dollars, Donnie goes off the reservation entirely, fleeing west to seek counsel from a guru who has set up a shop in a hotel conference area outside Cleveland. Bobby’s guy is not his guy anymore, and there’s the distinct possibility that Chuck and Bryan could get him to spill, after all, if Donnie weren’t such a weak, miserable wreck. For Bobby, part of being a hedge fund manager is taking big gambles and living with the occasional loss, but for the first time, his instincts are failing him. He’s accustomed to being the vulture or the hyena. Now he’s the carcass.

Bulls and Bears

• Two weeks ago, I wrote about the health of our two power marriages. And much like Bobby, I’ve been exposed as unreasonably optimistic about them. Bobby and Lara’s marriage has reached a low point after the Sept. 11 disclosures and now Wendy is aware that Chuck hasn’t really recused himself in the case against her boss. Chuck will no doubt face the consequences next week, but it should be noted that Wendy sincerely trusted that her husband was telling the truth, no matter how many people scoffed at the recusal. Chuck and Wendy have parts of their lives that they like to keep private, but this is true betrayal.

• Chuck’s vanity is topped only by his hypocrisy. When a rep from the United States attorney general’s office, played by Rob Morrow, shows up to request a place on the podium when the arrest goes down, Chuck adamantly refuses. “When the jungle was thick,” he says, “you hid in the hills, and now that I’ve bushwhacked through and I have El Dorado in my sights, you want to sack the city with me?” So eager is Chuck to get all the credit for kneecapping Axe Capital that he forgets, for a moment, that he’s officially recused himself from the case.

• The Bryan/Sacker/Terri love triangle hasn’t added much to the show, mainly because Bryan isn’t that compelling a catch, so it’s good to see Terri recuse herself from sleeping with him anymore.

• Line of the night, from Chuck to Bryan: “You’re apologizing because the lion next door ate our schnauzer. We should have thought of that possibility before we moved in and let the dog out.”

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the episode number. It is Episode 9, not Episode 8. It also referred incorrectly to the employer of a character played by Rob Morrow. He works for the United States attorney general, not the district attorney.